


With Me

by LynyrdLionheart



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, get on the damn boat Gendry, post finale fix it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 09:19:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18891682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LynyrdLionheart/pseuds/LynyrdLionheart
Summary: A ridiculously sweet little fix-it post finale for Arya and Gendry.  In which they actually talk, Arya and Sansa actually talk, and I try to make things a little happier.





	With Me

“You don’t look like a woman ready to see what’s west of Westeros.”

               Arya didn’t respond to Sansa’s approach.  She’d know her sister was coming, long before she had ever stepped foot on the rubble strewn ramparts where Arya looked over the wreckage of the city.  If she closed her eyes for too long, she could remember the fire, and the screams of the Dothraki and their victims alike. 

               Arya had seen terrible things.  She had done terrible things.  And yet… she didn’t sleep well, not with those memories in her mind.  She had believed herself immune to fear, after being No One, after facing the dead – but it wasn’t the Others she dreamt of.

               “I would say that you don’t look like a woman who is ready to be a Queen… but that would be a lie.”  Sansa had always looked read to be a Queen.  As a child, Arya had envied that poise.  Now, as an adult, she thought she might pity her sister, who would never know a life different from the one that had been created for her. 

               Arya would never let herself be trapped by expectations. 

               _None of it would mean anything if you’re not with me._

Arya felt her spine stiffen at the echo of words – a sweet memory, but one that she shoved down, roughly, violently.  She wasn’t in the business of doubting herself, and she would take the screams over the soft words that made her do exactly that.

               “I’m impressed that I’ve managed to fool you,” Sansa said, as she came to stand next to Arya, nudging their shoulders together.  It was an easy camaraderie, this one that they shared now. She would miss it, when she sailed for a new world… but it was also a warm reminder that she would be welcome back at any time.  Welcome _home_.

               Sansa, Queen or not, would always have room at her hearth for her younger sister.  Odd and annoying as she might claim Arya to be. 

               “Fool me?” Arya asked, turning her head just enough so Sansa could see her raised brow.  Sansa’s answering smile was small and wry – really just the quirk of her lip.  There and gone in a second.

               “Am I doing the right thing?” she asked at last. “Demanding our independence?  Bran as King… we’ll have a Stark in the south.”

               “For now,” Arya reminded her sister.  “Things have changed.  And we can trust Bran… but what about the next one they choose?  Or the one after that? Eventually, someone will try to cling to power.  It’s how it always works.  The North… they’ve been beholden to the south for too long.  We lost too much.  You did the right thing.”

               Sansa tried to smile again, but instead she looked worried.  Arya knew it was because it was just them; in front of the rest of the world, Sansa was impossible to read and as icy as their northern home.  It was only Arya who got to see her worry.

               For a moment, she wondered if she should leave.  Winterfell was still her home.  Perhaps she should stay, be at Sansa’s side.

               “You’ll make a good queen,” she said after a moment.  “A great one.  They love you.  And you love them.”

               “And you’ll make a wonderful adventurer,” Sansa agreed, and something tight and sharp in Arya’s chest loosened at the words.  She hadn’t realized she needed Sansa’s blessing to leave, not until it was given so easily.  “Just… come home?  Someday.  It can be next year, or in ten, and you don’t have to stay.  But I would like to see you again.”

               Arya didn’t even realize she was moving, before she had wrapped Sansa in her arms, hugging her tight.  Sansa’s grip was just as fierce in return, and they stood there, Arya’s face buried against her dress.  She would have said she felt like a child again, only the children they had been would have never done this.  Arya wished they had been allowed to grow into this relationship naturally, instead of being broken and chipped at until they finally found their peace.

               But now that they had it, she wouldn’t give it up.

               “You have other good-byes,” Sansa said at last, breaking away from their hug.  Arya stared at her, and that small, wry smile curved the corner of Sansa’s lip again.  “When you decide to have relations on the Keep’s grain, it isn’t nearly as secret as you might like it to be.”

               Arya wasn’t embarrassed by her night with Gendry.  It had been her own choice, and she had enjoyed.  She kind of wished she’d done it again.  But her cheeks still heated, under that knowing look in Sansa’s gaze. 

               “I’m happy for you,” her sister added after a moment.  “That you got to choose.” There was a brief hesitation, as Sansa glanced out over the devastation of King’s landing, then looked at Arya out of the corner of her eye.  “I… it was the first, right?  You got to choose?”

               A stark reminder that Sansa hadn’t, and Arya found herself gripping her hand as they stood their and looked at the ashes together.

               “I got to choose,” Arya assured her.  “It was a choice I would make again.”

               “Good,” Sansa murmured.  “Good.  Then… you should talk to him.”

               _Be my lady._

Arya didn’t answer, just squeezed Sansa’s hand once more.

\---

               The Lord of Storm’s End.

               It was a lofty title, for a bastard blacksmith.  And one that Gendry found made his skin itch.  People bowed to him now; people who would have once completely ignored his existence.

               He rather wished they would continue to ignore it.  He felt as though eyes were always on him now, watching his every move.  And considering how uncertain those moves were… well, he’d rather they look anywhere else.

               He found himself retreating to the building that had once housed the smith he’d worked at.  It was a burned-out husk that had apparently taken the brunt of a dragon’s flame, and he still felt more at home there than he did in the room in the Red Keep, with all it’s fine linen and too soft bed.

               Despite the damage, many of the tools had been left undamaged, and he busied himself with picking them up.  They could no longer be hung on hooks, so he leaned them against the wall instead, after testing that it wouldn’t crash down and bring the whole place down around his head.  But no; the damage might be bad, but the bones were good.

               “This isn’t the place I expected to find a Lord.”

               He froze for a moment at the words, in that voice that seemed to haunt him every time he let himself think too much.

               _But I’m not a lady.  I never have been.  That’s not me._

He had cursed himself a thousand times since he had asked to be Lady of Storm’s End – he had been so excited that he hadn’t bothered to _think_ , to remember who he was talking to.  He had known that she had never aspired to being a Lady. 

               Once, she had simply wanted to be his family.

               When he had finished berating himself, he’d tried to find her.  To apologize and try again and convince her to simply _be_ with him.  But by then, she had vanished, and not even her lady of a sister – the sister it had taken him near an hour to work up the courage to approach – had been able to tell him where she had gone.

               Then he had seen her again, a little beaten and bruised, sitting in the Dragon Pit with her siblings, and she had looked right past him.

               Now, she was standing behind him, and he didn’t know if he could turn around and be rejected again.  For a third time.

               “I’m not much a lord, am I?” he replied shortly, shoving some metal scraps a little harder than he should, and letting out a hiss when they sliced into his hand. 

               “That’s a damn foolish thing to do!” Arya snapped at him, and he blinked down at her when she was suddenly there, right in front of him, looking at his hand with those solemn eyes.  That response had been more like the girl he had known once, than the hardened woman she had become.  He swallowed when her fingers grazed his skin, and she paused, her eyes darting up to meet his.  “You’ll need to get that cleaned at looked at.  I’m not much of a healer, but Sam… _Grand Maester_ Sam should be able to help you.”

               She retreated from him then, and he felt bereft, even though her touch had only lasted a moment.

               “I’m going to be leaving,” she said, her back turned to him.  “I… I thought I should tell you.”

               “So now I get to know about your movements?” Gendry muttered.  “And what did I do to deserve such an honor?  Or did you realize that you’d hardly be able to ride north with an entire army without my realizing it?”

               “I’m not going north.”

               There was something different about her words.  Something stark and final about them – as if this were the last good-bye. 

               He didn’t like it.

               “Where are you going?”

               “It doesn’t matter,” Arya said after a moment’s pause.  “Just that I’m going.  And you’ll be heading to Storm’s End, I suppose.  And I didn’t want it to end with just looking at each other across a meeting.  That didn’t seem right.”

               “None of this seems right. Dammit, Arya!  I told you that I love you.”

               “And I told you that I can’t be a lady, Gendry. I don’t _want_ to be a lady.”

               “Well, I don’t much want to be a lord, do I?”

               Arya stared at him, and Gendry froze, because he hadn’t said that aloud.  Not to anyone.  Not since the excitement of being given a name, a real _name_ – Gendry _Baratheon_ – had passed, and he’d realized that it was an empty name without Arya.  He had never longed for Storm’s End; after all, he hadn’t even known Robert Baratheon was his father until he was a man grown. 

               No, what he wanted was _Arya_ , and what wast he point of being a damn lord without her?

               “It’s not me,” he finally said, with a small huff of amusement, because weren’t they quite the pair?

               “You don’t mean that,” Arya said after a beat of silence.  “You’ll wake up in the keep someday, surrounded by a lady and children, and you’ll realize it was what you wanted.”

               “I won’t,” Gendry said solemnly, and Arya snapped her mouth shut on whatever argument she might have given next.  She gazed out the doorway, to where the ash of the Dragon Queen’s attack still drifted.  It would take years to fix the city.  Longer still to fix the rest of the country.

               “I’m going west,” Arya finally said.

               “What’s west?” Gendry asked, brow furrowing.

               “I don’t know.  No one does.” She glanced over her shoulder at him, that spark in her eye, the one that reminded him this was still the Arya he had once knew, even if she were a little more solemn.  “That’s the point.  I have a ship, and men to help sail it.”

               Gendry waited for an invitation.  One to join her. 

               He probably shouldn’t have been surprised when it never came.

\---

               There was something freeing, about stepping onto the deck of a ship.  The salt air was different than the crisp air of the north, but just as refreshing in its own way. 

               She took a moment, to look at the men that had joined her crew, and then she saw the one that she hadn’t hired, standing at the helm of the ship.

               “I don’t remember saying you could tag along,” she said to Gendry, stepping up to his side.  He let out the smallest huff of laughter, and then his shoulder knocked against hers, just as Sansa’s had when they had stood above a broken city.  “We’re not going by Storm’s End.”

               “You are, actually.  But I’d rather not stop if it’s all the same.  They might ask me things. Better that they ask Davos, when he arrives as their proper lord.”

               Arya had never believed in hearts skipping a beat or that other romantic nonsense that a young Sansa had eaten up.  Yet in that moment, she thought it might all be true. 

               “You might regret giving it all up for me,” she said to him, because she was nothing if not pragmatic these days. 

               “Maybe,” Gendry agreed.  “I doubt it, though.  We’ll need to stop somewhere and get your men decent weapons.  They only have garbage.”

               Arya felt her lips curve into a smile, and then she actually laughed.  When was the last time she had laughed like that?

               She didn’t remember.

               Gendry kissed her, and his lips tasted like the salt of the air. It was wonderful.

               It was stupidly romantic.

               “Marry me,” she said when he broke away.  “And be my not at all a lord.”

               Gendry pulled her close and knocked their noses together affectionately.  Then he kissed her again.

               And behind them, the wreckage of King’s Landing disappeared.

              

              

              


End file.
